TEL AVIV – After the votes are counted tonight, and once the results of Israel’s general election are fully grasped, the acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and his Kadima Party, which is projected to receive the largest number of votes, will start negotiating a governing coalition.

To stay in power for the next few years, Mr. Olmert may be forced to compromise on some of his core beliefs, most Israeli analysts say. The centrist Kadima will have to join hands with the leftist Labor Party. Mr. Olmert, in that case, might need to turn his back on his free market ideals, which are despised by Labor’s leader, Amir Peretz.

During the election, Mr. Peretz, a former union boss, ran on very sketchy foreign policy and security ideas while stressing almost exclusively a populist economic platform promising government help for poorer Israelis. “His economics is Karl Marx, and the rest of his policies are Groucho Marx,” columnist Amir Oren wrote recently of Mr. Peretz.

“If there is something they really do not want, it is winning the election,” Kadima’s most visible spokeswoman, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, said of Mr. Peretz and other Labor leaders. Speaking on a Channel 10 television talk show, she addressed the widely held notion that Mr. Peretz is more interested in influencing economic and social change than in becoming Israel’s new prime minister.

But according to Haifa University’s Dan Schueftan, a Labor-Kadima coalition would have a ruinous effect on Israel’s economy. The adoption of Mr. Peretz’s policies would create welfare dependence among the poor and in the long run would empower the ultra-orthodox and the Israeli Arabs, two groups that mostly oppose classic Zionism, he told The New York Sun.

Mr. Schueftan added that a Labor-Kadima coalition would be seen as illegitimate by too many on the right, rendering further separation between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs all but impossible. Labor, he said, believes in dialogue with the Palestinian Arabs.

Any coalition that Labor joins will tend to pay too much attention to “this or that statement made by Haniya,” Mr. Schueftan said, referring to yesterday’s new offer of talks by Hamas leader Ismail Haniya. The Palestinian Authority led by the terrorist organization could negotiate with the Quartet – America, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations – Mr. Haniya said on the eve of the election.

Mr. Schueftan’s groundbreaking 1999 book, “Disengagement,” was widely read by top Israeli decision makers. His plan of redrawing Israel’s map, and doing it unilaterally, was later adopted by many of them, including Mr. Olmert and, eventually, Prime Minister Sharon.

Most Israeli analysts believe, however, that Mr. Olmert would need to join with the left to make progress with implementing his plan to redraw Israel’s borders. The top leaders of the right – which is made up of upstart party Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, and the Benjamin Netanyahu-led Likud – have publicly ruled out joining any government that would uproot Jewish settlements.

That, according to Israel Radio’s political analyst, Hanan Krystal, leaves Mr. Olmert with the sole option of joining up with Mr. Peretz and other leftist parties, which promise to back Kadima on abandoning the settlements but would coincidentally pull the party to the left on economic issues.

Mr. Olmert said that “any party joining his coalition would have to sign onto the government guidelines,” which would include withdrawal from settlements, Mr. Krystal said. Mr. Peretz will easily agree, but he will ask in return for major Cabinet portfolios that run the economy. “Welfare and other social issues are like Amir’s religion,” Mr. Krystal said, “while Olmert is similar to Bibi [Netanyahu] economically.”

Israel’s economy turned from recession to growth during Mr. Netanyahu’s three-year stint as finance minister under Mr. Sharon. He made heavy cuts in government budgets, making him unpopular among many in Likud’s traditional base. “I paid a personal price for doing what was necessary,” Mr. Netanyahu has said.

Mr. Schueftan said Mr. Netanyahu, with whom he has had many conversations over the years, might agree to return to the Finance Ministry under Mr. Olmert, conceding that, whatever his views, the majority of Israelis believe in disengagement from the territories. “Bibi did not enter the world of politics to become the leader of a fringe party consumed by ideology,” he said. Mr. Lieberman, who might surpass Likud today as the top right-wing vote-getter, is also a “very pragmatic” politician, Mr. Schueftan said.

A Kadima coalition with the left will quickly move to disengage from the territories, while any coalition with the right would place the issue “on the backburner,” Mr. Krystal said. Mr. Schueftan, however, said no disengagement plan could be carried out without some coalition building among Israelis and intensive planning done with Washington, which would ensure that nothing would take place before the end of 2007.

What counts is “Israel’s mainstream and the administration in Washington,” Mr. Schueftan said. “All the rest is fluff.” Regardless of the results tonight, he believes a wide governing coalition among the parties that represent most Israelis will eventually lead to further realization of the plan he pioneered.